Category Archives: -Karen Kittrell

Got Plot? Or Not

Like the stepping stones in the serene Japanese Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden, storytellers recount tales moving through a series of classic plot points. The concept of plot stretches back to the earliest recorded histories: cave drawings, tribal tattoos, epic poems, plays and theatre. Plot is the weave of our history, ancestry, immigration and patriotism.

Some stepping stones, however, are not for walking. In the Japanese garden, only mental journeys travel from one side of this path to the other. The meticulously raked gravel rests undisturbed and in perfect harmony with the stones. No haphazard or careless footprints occur. There is no plot, only contemplation.

Somewhere, someone will accomplish great things. Books will capture the details, and schoolchildren will memorize the facts. Movies will be made. Who will be the hero of these next quests? You? Me? Unfortunately, the only quest in my future is surviving the commute, managing my “to do” lists and shuttling the offspring to cross country meets and back to college. Hence, for most, modern existence is one plotless mess.

Is that bad? In 1939, James Thurber captured the desire for greatness and the restlessness of our ego in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” In the original short story, Mrs. Mitty instructs Walter to run two errands while she visits the hairdresser. Several fantastic dream sequences distract Walter, but he gets his overshoes and puppy biscuits. Walter is a sympathetic character, and the story is one hundred percent relatable. It’s “plotless us” in a six page story.

For fun, let’s forget everything we know about story structure and embrace the plotless story. Our story is big on character and less so on action. The story demonstrates a goal and a global theme. Plotless fiction progresses by conveying meaning, relationship, or an interpretation of memory. Unlike a story with continued rising action, this story structure waffles along the time horizon with possibly, if we’re lucky, some aspect of emotional change or growth. While fiction debates the power of the prose verses the strength of the story, film balances less plot, narrative, with more imagery and character.

For example, the film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, is essentially plotless, but excels in imagery, unique characters and powerful acting. The independent five year old protagonist, Hushpuppy, fails to achieve, accomplish, deliver or find anything. Instead, the film is a storytelling of her unique talents of listening to heartbeats, her strength to persevere and her disconnect between reality and her fictional southern Louisiana bayou called “The Bathtub.” The film begins with a folk tale about the Aurochs, feared and legendary for eating cave babies. In a perfect example of storytelling, the teacher points to her arm bearing a tattooed image of the beast. Conflict ensues with nature (storm), man (Wink, people behind the levee and the authorities) and self (the Aurochs). Yet, the film does not have a climax. It is more a “day in the life of Hushpuppy.” In those memorable days, a storm ruins her home, and her father, Wink, faces the ultimate life battle.

Popular culture perpetuates plotless story arcs. For example, the Moth Radio Hour on National Public Radio encourages storytellers to find a story where they have a stake. No stake means no story. These five minute true stories make the audiences laugh, cry and sigh. Many of the stories are meandering slices of life. For example, let’s examine these two moth stories: (Shakoor, 2012; Lane, 2014).

Satori Shakoor (“Point of No Return”) explores inner conflict in her desperate job search. I’ve listened to this story many times and never tire of the humor and fantastic delivery, but the story arc is plotless. She has a problem. The problem is not resolved.

As a native Texan, I would like to adopt Faye Lane and her adorable drawl into my family. When Faye tells of her mother’s beauty shop, I wonder if it could be the neighborhood beauty shop that operated across the street from my grandmother’s house in Temple, Texas. Faye Lane (“Fireworks From Above”) has strong thematic material in her mission to be kind and a goal, to bring individuals together through an emotional experience. Her flight attendant experiences, which individualize the group, are an emotional jackpot but not a plot.

Moth storytellers extract the emotional core of a story. Emotion is a highly volatile element on the storytelling periodic table. It cannot be sustained for long periods, which is why, plotlessness is successful on a small scale. A short story, a live storytelling and even an artsy film are great outlets for the plotless.

Diary of a Binge Reader

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Donna Tartt’s, The Goldfinch, hijacked my social life for the past two weeks. And consequently, my life as a binge reader emerged once again.

For months, I can exist perfectly content on my diet of short stories. Then, the unwieldy novel finds me unsatisfied in my 5000 word count stories, lures me to a world of plots with multiple characters and offers a new captivating world to enjoy and forget the everyday mundane. The process begins innocently enough — an evening hour in a big chair with my feet up, a chapter instead of dinner, an alarm set earlier to read before breakfast, and eventually the pages of a 784 page tome reluctantly parted across my sleeping self — until in the middle of the night, the book falls, thudding loudly against the floor, startling the dog who barks and wakes the household and next door neighbors.

How does this happen to me? I confess a predilection for Donna Tartt’s brand of storytelling. Is Tartt’s magic the plot or the theme? A diagram from the NY Book Editors shows themes of prize winning novels in 2014. The Goldfinch won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and contains many of the plot lines of prize-winning novels: unlikely friendships, betrayal, terrorism, death, theft, school days, running away, criminal gangs, love and suicide. Other winning plots include less appealing topics: cannibalism, East London, homicidal cowboy brothers, an escaped tiger, horniness, jazz, nanny trust issues, a mysterious letter, Totalitarian Bucharest, and war. As to plot, Tartt chose well except I am intrigued by the cowboy idea.

The NY Book Editors post also includes speculation on what makes an interesting story. The answer is a good story arc. Larry Brooks’ Story Engineering also covers these topics along with a bevy of books about story structure. In “Writing Fiction Like a Pro” by Steve Alcorn, the classic three act structure includes nine dramatic elements. For the elements, I included a sketch by fellow writer and classmate, Mame Zirro.

Act 1 introduces the characters, the setting and the story. Through The Goldfinch’s adolescent narrator, Theo, the reader meets his mother and learns the critical backstory. The trigger is the plot point that propels the protagonist into Act 2. It is also called the inciting incident or the door that the character passes through that cannot be undone. Theo’s plot point occurs after the museum explosion. Surrounded by debris, Theo meets Welty and follows his advice. With his mother missing and his theft of a famous masterpiece, he cannot go back to his former life.

Act 2 is the middle of the story. Our boy, Theo, is in crisis – dead mother, abandoned by his father, nowhere to go, no one to turn to, stolen painting, and dead man’s ring. Imagine a horizontal graph of time. After the beginning first act, the middle second act extends for the bulk of the novel. In the case of The Goldfinch, Act 2 is 400-500 pages of Theo’s escalating struggles with his friend’s family, his father’s return, his misadventures in Las Vegas and his betrayal of father-figure Hobart.

Act 2 ends with another plot point. This time the story veers in an unexpected direction. Act 3 is the shortest in duration and the highest point of tension. While Act 2 concentrated on the emotional story and struggles of the protagonist, Act 3 is all plot. Theo is older and burdened by his theft and loss of the famous Fabritius painting of The Goldfinch. His epiphany guides him to a new course of action, a solution for the greater good and his final plan to save the painting, actually several plans, since nothing in a Tartt novel will work the first time. The climax ends where the story began in Amsterdam. I will leave the ending untold for future readers to enjoy. Suffice it to say, Act 3 resolves Theo’s many problems.

The three act structure probably has as many critics as Donna Tartt. Some argue for more than three acts and others for less, such as the simplicity of creating a problem and resolving a problem. The internet displays diagrams of pinch points and new takes on structure with grids, circles and even circus tents. As for Donna Tartt, even the literary crowd disagrees on whether this is a fabulous adult novel or a Harry Potter-esque children’s book. Reviews on Goodreads offer accounts of unfinished readings (no doubt from quitters, wimps and lightweights) in contrast to exhilarating comments about the plot and characters.

For this novel with a massive three act structure, my vote is yes. Read it. But don’t drop it on your foot. Don’t try to fit it in your backpack or purse. And don’t drop it in the middle of the night unless you want to risk a call to 911 from the neighbors.

Plotting for the Flaw

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Stories begin with character. I usually develop a character by writing his or her thoughts, language and interactions. A more efficient writing style would first plan and construct character flaws to build the story.

“Write Fiction Like a Pro,” an online class by Steve Alcorn, defines a flaw as an emotional shortcoming of the character. All great stories build on the protagonist realizing and overcoming one of these flaws. The classic flaws include lack of self-confidence, lack of self-worth, insecurity, naivety, inability to put the past behind, inability to face the past, inability to trust others, inability to make a commitment, stubbornness, rashness, prejudice, selfishness, arrogance, envy and greed.

Earlier this year, the New Yorker published a short story, “All You Have To Do,” by Sarah Braunstein. One of the reviews claimed the narrator’s flaw was that he sees his world in a limited way. What kind of flaw is that? A real flaw might be naivety, lack of self-worth, or inability to make a commitment.

The next on the plotting block is the antagonist’s flaw. A story’s conflict originates from the antagonist’s opposing force with an equal but opposite flaw. For example, Divergent by Veronica Roth, pairs protagonist, Tris (lack of confidence) with Erudite leader, Jeanine Matthews (overconfident). Unlike the protagonist, the antagonist’s flaw is tragic and causes failure. The antagonist’s composition was perhaps my biggest take away from this online class.

My goal in any class is to refine my work-in-progress list. The target this time was a short story I wrote in March. The story was too big for 1500 words, and additional scenes were already forming in my mind. Then, Ginny Wiehardt posted Top 7 Signs Your Short Story Wants to be a Novel, and I knew what I had to do. My protagonist’s flaw was an inability to put the past behind. While he fought a secret enemy, the opposition was missing. I tweaked the teenage shopkeeper to focus on his own selfish future with a hint of sociopath in the mix. The lack of concern for others gave my protagonist a reason and a cause to live in the present.

Another exercise in the class included identifying the passion that inspires my writing. My answer was relationships, secrets and science. Consider the relationship of parents and their teenage children. Both are ready to part, fearful of the separation, and concerned about the secrets lurking between them. To practice flaws — opposition and a subtle mirroring — here is an example of characters I dreamed to life today:
The parent, the story’s protagonist, selects the farthest seat from the incoming students at the matriculation ceremony. His folding chair, one of the few seats in the late afternoon shade, has a slight leftward tilt, the ground slanting toward the sidewalk of the college quadrangle. The protagonist takes a printed program, a quality piece designed for a permanent place in the bottom of some mother’s drawer, and finds his son’s name. The boy reminds him somewhat of his ex-wife but more specifically of his brother-in-law, currently housed at the federal penitentiary in Otisville, New York. He scans the other students’ names. From the thousand enrolled in the same graduating class with his progeny, one name is a blatant defiance of the strict and conditional wording that accompanied his generous gift to the college of science. He stands, tosses the program in the trash can and glances right just in time to see his son, the antagonist, hand lifted in a mocking wave as if nothing was wrong.

This character sketch offers many potential flaws to build a story. The protagonist is rash and unable to put the past behind. The antagonist hints at some arrogance and naivety. Many things could go wrong on a near perfect August day.

Another practice idea is to watch movies for the character flaws in the protagonist and the antagonist. Watch for the conflict, and you will find the flaws whether the movie is Silver Linings Playbook, Man of Steel, Run All Night, or Woman in Gold.

What to Expect When Your Writing Class is Online

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Tempted by the forty free online writing classes available at my public library, I enrolled as an experiment. The full catalog of 350 courses competed with MOOCs (massive open online courses) and delivered a shorter continuing education opportunity in writing and other business topics. I joined with a hundred online learners from across the country and Canada for a brief six weeks of creative writing lessons. The interaction and other classmates were as interesting as the course content.

The exercises began innocently enough asking each student’s reason for taking the class. I’ll share several of my submissions. For instance, here’s my introduction:

The dog made me do it. He worries about neglecting important things like watching sunsets, skipping rocks at the lake and hiking nearby trails.

It was irreverent compared to the other classmates’ expressions of genuine excitement and unbridled nervousness. They used their first name, their full name or a nickname like Jelly Bean, Milwaukee Maiden, GalSal or Mother Bird. The anonymous classroom became a haven for over sharing. I discovered, most of the class was currently in crisis – death of a loved one, newly retired, birth of an infant, empty nests, schizophrenia, cancer, abuse, graduates from high school or college, English lit major wanna be’s, traumatized veterans, divorcees, joblessness, dead end jobs, stressful “on the verge of quitting” jobs, sexuality concerns, and caregivers to parents and spouses. The class offered an outlet to cope, a catharsis for the traumas of the past, present and future.

To that note, I was not so far removed from crisis myself. One of the assignments required writing about a candle. Pent up emotions spilled into this exercise. Yes, tears fell on the keyboard over an imaginary candle with a fictitious past.

The tin box sits next to an empty and worn book of matches from a Mexican restaurant near my mother’s old house and a cigarette lighter I confiscated when my teenager flirted with smoking. Graphic whirls of block printed roses decorate the lid. The image resembles both my college hand-carved block printing and my Connecticut rose garden including the wicked, hateful thorns of the floribundas deceptively named Cinderella. Yet, the tin hints of a different Cinderella – purses, crowns, wavy flourishes and little flower dots of pink – and a costume, plastic face mask on top of a printed rayon tunic visible through the cellophane window of a shallow cardboard box. I lift the candle’s lid, smell the sickly perfume of roses and remember my mother. I spark the lighter. The candle wick, a charred nub at the bottom of a melted ring in the wax, fails to light. I return the heart-shaped tin and matches to the drawer with other keepsakes and throw the lighter in the trash under the sink.

Two months after writing about that candle, I reread my passage and still feel the complex emotional mother child relationship, filled with roses, thorns and cigarette lighters. Fortunately, the next assignment was safe from my own memories and focused on a prompt, an ex-spouse arriving on a bus in a snowstorm. Each student chose a point of view and present or past tense. My classmates, more savvy to the woes and causes of divorce, wrote of anger, betrayal, infidelities, abuse and addiction. Instead, I wrote of a homesick young man uncertain of his future.

John jolted awake at the bus driver’s announcement of Grand Haven. The snow globe effect of pelting white flakes obscured the view of his hometown bus depot. He grabbed his backpack and rushed to the door to find whichever family member drew the short straw and had to pick him up in this miserable weather. His mom probably paced at home at the front door waiting for him, having planned a family get-together to hear his tales of living in New York, the small bit part in an off Broadway theater and his new friends in the city. Bounding down the steps, John slipped on the last wet step, tumbled out the door and landed spread eagle on top of a woman waiting with her bag. Expecting her to be angry or hurt, John jumped up only to discover Martha hysterically laughing and joking about his daring dive and poor timing to wait until their divorce was final for a grand effort.

The most joyful assignment embraced free writing – unfiltered and unedited. The instructor explained about Galumphing and Bricolage. Galumphing was to select an item from three different categories – a person, a place, and an object. I chose Bricolage which was to write whatever comes to mind about trivial objects, such as a candy wrapper.

The iridescent candy wrapper rested in my palm, a tidy two inch square of yellowish cellophane. In my kitchen, I sucked on the hard candy, mystified at the pleasant, yet unrecognizable, exotic flavor. And when I glanced again at the wrapper, it was twice the size. I scratched at my head, pondering where had I found this odd candy. Oh yes, it was in the console of my car after I had let my lost, and recently found, relative Larry take the car for the week to Burning Man. I wanted to ask him about the candy, but Larry, was still sleeping in my guest bedroom, a walk-in closet if you want to be precise, and by the sound of his snoring, probably out of contact for the next four to six days. Now, the candy wrapper was weighing heavy on my hands and increasing to the size of a poster board. I reached for the ruler in my kitchen drawer and found I was too short. The wrapper had not grow; I had shrunk. Naked, I slipped out of my very large clothes and tore a bit of the wrapper to use for petite clothing. I vaguely remembered seeing other candies in different colored wrappers. If the yellow wrapped candy made me small, what did the others do? Which color should I eat next?

For each of the assignments The instructor urged the class to follow the golden rule of feedback – give comments to receive comments. My fragile crisis-fraught classmates needed support, encouragement and praise for their brave undertakings. And every evening, I returned to the class website to see the comments left for me, such as the ones below on my Bricolage candy wrapper exercise.

Jenn on 5/28/2015 10:09:51 AM

What a great twist! I love it! Makes me think of Alice in Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So creative!

GalSal on 5/28/2015 12:46:57 PM

Wow–I was so fooled until you said you had shrunk. Great imagination!

Chuck on 5/29/2015 8:17:01 AM

Great creativity, it kept me spellbound. Are we having fun yet?

Joy on 5/29/2015 5:27:38 PM

I struggled with bricolage but you made it seem easy to be creative with something so simple

Dave on 5/30/2015 10:10:56 AM

A great start and you could take it in two interesting ways. The obvious, fantasy way, is to go on a hunt for the other candy. The other way, the candy having come from Burning Man, is that the character is tripping and she might have some explaining to do to people that wonder why she is running around naked with a piece of candy wrapper for clothing.

Lea on 5/30/2015 6:42:35 PM

It also makes me think of Alice in Wonderland! I like the normalcy at the beginning while it slowly starts to become magical. Great 🙂

Mama Crow on 6/1/2015 5:53:07 AM

What an adventurous piece! Great job keeping the imagination vividly strong!

Milwaukee Maiden/Linda on 6/3/2015 4:52:21 PM

Very good storyline with a twist. I enjoyed reading it. You will make a great writer.

The course made me appreciate the ability of technology to engage humanity across the country. The encouraging comments were fun and an unexpected treasure. Before the class ended and all the words deleted, I copied the comments to a file and saved them for a time when I might need generous and supportive comments. For now, another class begins.

Four E’s of Public Readings

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With less than one week before my first public reading, I panic. Oh sure, I’ve read at writers workshops, but other writers expect flat expressionless words and concentrate on the print. I usually flub a few words, stumble along internally editing as I read and neglect any attention to how I sound. I’m a terrible reader, and now I’m subjecting an innocent and unsuspecting audience not only to my words but also my reading.

My story of 1500 words takes almost fifteen minutes to read aloud. Ten minutes is the ideal length according to Randy Susan Meyer of the Huffington Post in “Ten Tips for Writers Reading in Public.” Now if I could channel my inner George Saunders, I might finish in five minutes. He races through the audio recordings of his stories in the Tenth of December. His reading pace creates “excitement” which is one of the goals for writers reading in public.

Meyer recommends to either “entertain, enlighten, excite, engage” and always smile. From the four E’s, I decide to “engage” the audience. Eye contact is the key. And if I remember to smile, that’s an added bonus.

Now comes the tough part – practicing. I find an old copy of my story with critique comments. My writing group’s questions, comments and quandary float in the margins of my hardcopy. The comments are my target list of places to add extra emphasis and accomplish the equivalent of saying, “Don’t miss this. It’s important.”

I underline words and mark places for voice inflection. My story becomes a musical score with crescendos and decrescendos. I add a few staccatos and mark the tempo changes fast and slow.

My biggest struggle is conveying changes in speakers – the ones without attribution tags. In print, a reader can see the carriage return to the next line. My solutions include moving a non-verbal action by the speaker to the beginning of the sentence, pausing before changing speakers, and varying the rate of speech for each character.

I draw on what I learned at previous jobs. Big companies with hordes of human relations people — scheduling training every time you stand from your desk to fetch a cup of coffee — develop employees with twenty-first century skills, such as presenting and communicating. I benefit from years of presentations and public speaking classes.

Thank you HR. I love you and take back all the mean things I said

about your training programs. You made me a better person.

I know how to stand and where to look. Practice eliminates little distractions, such as turning or flipping pages. My pages are in a leather binder to prevent my shaking hands from spoiling the illusion that I know what I’m doing.

Writer’s Relief, “Open Mike Night: Ten Tips For Reading Your Writing In Public,” provides useful tips: arrive early, use a big font, and dress professionally. As a writer, however, I want to know how early, how big and what is considered a writer’s professional clothes. Will I have a podium to set my notes? Or will I stand alone behind a microphone? I choose slacks and heels and rock the “I just left the office thirty minutes ago” look.

My preparation includes watching videos of accomplished writers at public readings. I’m fascinated by Sherman Alexie. Critics call him a stand-up comic. He writes. He jokes. He makes films. He entertains.

Writers Relief also advises what appears to be obvious. “Maintain an audible volume.” At my reading, my personal cheering section sits beside me. When another writer stands to read, one of my cheerleaders whispers, “Read louder and slower than that.”

Thanks to my pre-worries and research, my nervousness disappears when I begin reading. I make eye contact and people smile at me. At one point in the reading, I notice the room is silent and listening. This wonderful audience cares about my crazy made-up characters. They laugh at the right spots and respond with thunderous applause. Thank you, gracious audience. Then, I remember to smile.

Tags: Public readings, Randy Susan Meyers, Huffington Post, Writer’s Relief, George Saunders, Sherman Alexie

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